Most Amusing Local Beer Names

We’re bookish and brewish, so inevitably, as we sit in a warm pub on a rainy day drinking a pint of Big Time Dark Days Black IPA at the Fiddler’s Inn, the two tendencies collide. For years, my fellow beer (and word) lovers have been keeping a list of the most amusing names for beer. We’re not interested in the obvious, the Moose Drools of the world. Our interests lie elsewhere—in the subtle, the double entendre, the call and response. My friends Kevin Forhan and Bill Jenkins, who have brewed at the Pike, Big Time, Elysian, Elliott Bay and other breweries, shared their lists.

First, inspired by Old Leghumper (Thirsty Dog Brewing Company, Akron, Ohio), there’s the “Old” or “Olde” category, harking back to Theakston’s Old Peculier: Old Wooly (Big Time Brewery) and Old Bawdy (Pike Brewing Company)...

Then, the Literary Call and Response: California’s Russian River Brewing’s much-awarded aged beer Pliny the Elder (and of course, older than its Pliny the Younger) was answered by Jenkins at the Big Time with Whiny the Complainer, in response to the oft-heard gripe at beer festivals, “I’ve waited in line for 45 minutes, and you ran out!”

Jenkins’ Ave Rat Malt Liquor at the Big Time Brewery, an attempt to capture the zeitgeist of the University District, prompted Forhan, mocked among his peers for brewing at The Ram at the Northgate Mall, to produce The Mall Walker. Finally, not to put too fine a point on it, Walking Man Brewing seamlessly combines the two concepts in its Street Walker Malt Liquor...